The Foretelling (Charlotte Bloom #1)

by Amanda Richardson

  "We plan on staying in Los Angeles as long as it makes sense. My job could relocate me, as could Charlotte’s. We’re open to that, but yes we do plan on staying in Los Angeles. No on religion, because neither of us are religious. And of course, all parents are welcome in our home, if need be." He squeezed my hand as he said this. Like before, it was great hearing him say this. The affirmation in his words comforted me in ways I didn’t even know I needed to be comforted.

  Lainey’s prediction had rocked me from head to toe. I was always looking for cracks in our relationship. These "therapy" sessions were for just that: if there were cracks, I wanted to address them head on. But every time we had these sessions, I paid extra special attention to his answers, and our relationship in general. I only found smooth ground. What could possibly turn our marriage inside out in three short months? How bad could three months be, in the grand scheme of being together for eight years? I wracked my brain for an answer, but I only grasped thin air. We really were the perfect couple.

  ***

  April 2014

  About three months into actively trying, Harry and I received a false positive. I was elated at the positive result, but I took another test the next day and got a negative. Sobbing, I called Harry, explaining what had happened. Nothing was worse than having something like this come into fruition (or so you thought) and then having it yanked out of your hands a day later. I could feel him worrying over the phone, and he offered to come home. I brushed it off and told him to stay at work. I would be fine. I still had time. In the back of my head, I could feel myself thinking something so completely honest, I didn’t consciously address it: Time for what?

  As much as I loved Harry, I started to feel paranoid and out of control shortly after the false positive. I wasn’t myself. Amara’s wedding was a mere two months away. This had to happen; or my marriage would fall apart. That thought crept up on me one day at work and slammed into me so hard, I felt myself clutching my desk for support, even though I was seated. I left, claiming illness, shortly after. I was starting to believe Lainey, and that’s when everything turned upside down. I could feel the strain bogging down our relationship.

  Dread settled in with each passing day. I focused my energy on getting pregnant. It was the only thing that kept my mind preoccupied. It was exhausting. Especially when we weren’t getting results. Harry could tell something was off. I knew he felt it, but he was too much of a gentleman to say anything, which also bothered me for some inexplicable reason. I didn’t want him to notice how obsessed I was becoming, and yet I was angry that he didn’t notice. He remained calm and collected, while I was freaking out.

  It was the worst at night. Every night, we’d sit in bed and watch TV before going to sleep. I’d always put my head in his lap and we had always talked during the commercials about our day. He retrieved my slippers when my feet got cold. He gave me a back rubs nightly, and eventually, we would go to sleep. I stayed awake most nights just thinking. I had a wonderful husband who obviously adored me, and he was good at comforting me. But something was niggling me from inside. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it. I felt content, but I didn’t necessarily feel fulfilled. Something was missing: from my life, from us, from this place and where we were right now. I was sure it was just because of the baby we were trying to have. But… what if it was something else? I couldn’t deny the doubts that had started to creep in recently. They came so often and so swiftly, that they began to blur with reality. I feared I’d gone mad. Seriously – I’d googled psychosis symptoms.

  The first time I'd admitted the truth to myself, I'd cried all night in our shared bathroom. I suddenly couldn’t see our future anymore. Over time, the vision of us had disappeared. I couldn’t see myself making a baby with Harry. I wasn’t sure if I'd ever seen it, or if this was a recent development. While I sat on the cold, tiled bathroom floor with Harry asleep in the next room, I couldn’t help but think that the reason we weren’t getting pregnant was because we weren’t really compatible; because we weren’t meant to be together. I knew it had only been a few months, but why wasn’t it working?

  I told myself that this was just a projection of what happened with Lainey. She’d "predicted" something and it had taken up in my mind, and gone from a lame prediction to what I thought was the future. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course we would have a baby. Of course we would be fine. Of course Lainey was wrong. I was only thinking this because she had put these thoughts in my mind.

  But… what if she was right?

  ***

  June 2014

  What happened over the next couple of months felt like a totally organic downward spiral. I’d been testing and retesting every week. I wanted instant results, and we weren't getting them. I wanted to be pregnant already. The feeling of doom and gloom I’d had in April had escalated into full-blown panic. Harry and I had started sleeping in separate bedrooms, and having sex became a complete chore rather than an exciting and enjoyable activity. Lainey was right. Lainey was right. Lainey was right. That was the mantra that kept me up at night, fully aware that my marriage was about to hit rock bottom, or worse.

  Harry was never angry with me for acting so crazy. But I think that’s why I became so crazy. Because he was so passive, I had nothing to fight for. I had no one to fight with. I had nothing to beat my fists against and yell about all of the unfairness in our world right now. Now, full days would pass and we wouldn’t kiss once. He wouldn’t tell me about work, and I wouldn’t complain to him about not being pregnant or my inconsiderate period.

  I began to avoid him, not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid of what he might say to me if we were stuck in a room together for too long. My avoiding him was obviously affecting him. What had started as an innocent, "I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom tonight", had turned into weeks of sleeping separately. Pretty soon, we'd even stopped having sex. What I was afraid of happening within five months had happened. I’d pushed him far enough away and made him miserable enough to sleep in a separate bedroom. I’d done this. I couldn’t help but beat myself up about it. And yet… I didn’t feel like trying to fix it.

  The last few weeks had been hell. We would go out with friends, and exchange cold glances with each other over the table. We wouldn’t say anything in the car ride home. Most of this stemmed from the fact that I’d stupidly told everyone we were trying to get pregnant, thus inviting all kinds of commentary about what we should do, what would probably happen, how we would know if we were infertile, which doctor to see if this occurred, etc. And I’d sit there and take it, while Harry sat there and smiled, nodding, not standing up for me, for us, or defending our way of doing things. I felt completely alone.

  We’d officially been trying to get pregnant for five months, which, in the grand scheme of things, was not a long time. I laughed at how I had thought this would all go: we’d try for a couple of months at the most and be successful, have a baby, and everything would be hunky-dory. When that didn’t happen, I started to see the other cracks in our marriage that had never bothered me before. I began to panic at a life with just Harry. I needed children as a buffer. That realization was harder to come to terms with than anything else. Harry was just a character in my storybook life.

  It surprised me how quickly everything had fallen apart. A few days before Amara’s wedding, I’d been enjoying a personal day off of work when Harry had stormed in, clearly pissed off about something. I muted my TV show, which was becoming routine for me. I’d rarely watched TV before, but suddenly I was sitting on my ass a lot of the time, eating ice cream. You didn’t have to be a therapist to see that I was not happy.

  "Dammit, Charlotte, the door is unlocked. Please, for the love of God, lock it when I’m not here. You know what happened to Sharon Tate, just a few houses down."

  "That was also in 1969. People were on drugs," I sighed. When he was in a mood, there was no use trying to argue with him.

  "People are still on drugs," he sighed, heaving his large messenger
bag on to the couch next to me. Sighing had also become a common way for us to express our discontent for one another. I’d started to barely notice these outbursts. He shuffled his feet and came to stand right in front of the TV. "I’m sorry. I just had a bad day. How was your day off?"

  In my mind, his question was accusatory, and I fired back that even though I hadn't been at work, I was still working. A wave of guilt came over me as I lied. I hadn’t been working. I’d been moping around all day. I motioned for him to come sit down next to me. He hesitated.

  "I’m sorry. I guess I also had a bad day. Please, tell me what happened." I patted the seat next to me impatiently.

  As he sat down next to me, I caught a whiff of his cologne. The same cologne that he'd been wearing since the day I met him. What had happened to us? The mere scent of his cologne was enough for me to break down. I started to cry, and I cupped my face in my hands as he sat there. I felt his warm hand on my back, and instantly regretted snapping at him just a minute earlier. What was wrong with us? What was wrong with me?

  Being married for six years has its ups and downs. We argued, we fought; we even took a five-day break at one point three years into our marriage. I couldn't even remember what it had been about, but from that day forward, we promised each other that we’d always talk about our issues up front to avoid a big confrontation that would again escalate into a break from our marriage. Which is exactly what we weren’t doing at this point. I was normally very open to communicating, but this time, something felt different. It felt like instead of a little lava spill, we were waiting for "the big one" – the fight to end all fights. And I still wasn’t even sure what we were fighting about. I felt broken, literally, and not like myself. I felt hollow, fat, lazy, and cheated. I wanted a baby. I hated to sound like a bratty child, but why wasn’t I getting a baby? And, WHY wasn't Harry more compassionate? Or more anything? I needed some kind of reaction from him. I wanted him to fight. But it felt like he’d already given up.

  The thing about Harry and I was, we were both way too nice. We never wanted to hurt the other’s feelings. I resorted to passive aggressive behavior in order to spare him from how I really felt, which was mad at the world. He wasn’t responsible, although in a way I blamed him because he didn’t seem to care either way. I was practically screaming inside every time I received a negative pregnancy test, and yet he was there, solid and unmoving. I just wanted him to fight with me.

  So as I sat there sobbing into Harry’s arms, I started to get angry. Our perfect marriage five months ago had turned into my worst nightmare. I blamed myself, but I also blamed him. I needed him, and he couldn’t really see that, or he chose not to. Maybe he was scared too, but he was showing it differently. Either way, I cried for almost an hour that night and that’s when Harry told me he thought I needed to see a therapist.

  I was stunned at his suggestion at first, and I looked at him like I’d been shot. I needed to see a therapist? Excuse me? I sneered, and pulled away, standing up, ready to go lock myself in our bedroom for the night, the room I’d shared with only myself for the last three weeks. We’d stopped going to our marriage counselor, because it had become a parody of itself. It was declared (by our therapist) that counseling was no longer needed, as we didn't have any issues to bring to the table. This was obviously before the shit hit the fan. I didn’t even have the willpower to make us go back. I’d stopped trying.

  "Charlotte, please. Just listen to me. I don’t think you understand how far you’ve fallen. And I don’t just mean the normal depression about not getting pregnant." He sighed, and started pacing the room. "You’re calling out of work for no reason, you haven’t helped Amara with any of the wedding planning like you were so excited to do, and you just seem generally… changed. You’re different, Charlotte, and I can’t figure out why. It’s scary, seeing the person you love change into this total shell of the person they were before."

  I sat back down on the couch. I put my face in my hands, and bent down, curling into myself. More tears came and went, and as I sat there, I didn’t really feel like a shell of my former self. Sure, I was different, but I was changing. For some inexplicable reason, I wasn't ashamed of the person I was becoming. I was a person discarding their old shell. I didn’t know if I was handling it in the healthiest way (pints of ice cream every week had certainly made my clothes fit much tighter, for example), but everything was changing too quickly for me to comprehend.

  "I just don’t know what else to do. You’re a different person all of a sudden. I feel like you’re blaming me for something. And it started the instant we started trying to get pregnant. Do you remember that night, Char? The night we first tried, full of hope and anticipation? I could sense something that night. I could sense the shift, but I didn't recognize it until just a few days ago."

  "I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say." I’d become numb. This was my marriage we were discussing, and I was becoming indifferent.

  "Why did you want to start trying to get pregnant that night? Why that night? What happened that day?"

  I’d never mentioned Lainey’s prediction to Harry. There were numerous times where I thought it might slip out, or I might confess it drunkenly (drunken confessions were very commonplace for me). But then I would imagine his sweet face and the look of hurt that would inevitably shadow his features. I tried to have a baby with him to prove a point, to defy someone else. It was the worst reason ever. I knew that. But I couldn’t let him in on the secret. He would be devastated.

  "What? What do you mean? You know why. You’d gotten promoted. We’d talked about trying once you got promoted. And I am a woman, and I have a biological clock that makes my uterus literally ache with longing every time I see a child. So, of course I jumped at the chance." I had to tell him a lie. I blatantly lied to my husband, whom I’d never lied to before.

  "Do you swear that’s the only reason? There’s not something that you’re trying to hide from me?" Damn. He was good.

  "I swear."

  "I still think you should see a therapist."

  He slowly sauntered off to bed, shoulders slumped. Evidently, our conversation had taken a toll on him. The sight of him retreating into the guest bedroom, yet again, made my heart ache. Even if Lainey was right, and even if we were falling out of love, I still cared about Harry. He was still my husband, after all.

  I walked over to the guest bedroom and saw that he was changing into sweatpants. He looked up at me with such despair that it shook my very being. I was causing this hurt. I was lying to him and treating him like dirt.

  "Everything will be OK. You know that, right?" I smiled. My voice came out soft and unsure. I wasn't sure if I was trying to reassure him or myself. He shrugged his shoulders and got into bed. "Please sleep with me tonight." I knew it was a lost cause.

  "I’ll see you in the morning. Can you please shut the door?"

  I stood there, completely stunned. Slowly, I shut the guest bedroom door. Now there was a wall between us. We slept in separate beds. Miscommunication and fighting had become the norm. Add on a few dozen failed pregnancy tests, and now, lying. What had happened to us?

  They say sometimes marriage fails like the turning of a light switch. It happens quickly, and pretty soon you can’t remember what the room looked like with the light on. You only see darkness. We were a sinking ship, and neither one of us seemed to want to save it.

  I knew it wasn’t Lainey that tore us apart; it was me. She was merely the nudge that got me past a certain point and made me brave enough to question everything.

  The night before Amara’s wedding, Harry and I had non-baby making sex for the first time in months, and as we rolled over to go to sleep, Harry told me he loved me. It wasn’t an ‘I love you, and you’ll always be mine', kind of I love you. It felt like a goodbye and I couldn’t figure out why; or, I couldn’t admit it to myself. It felt like the end. It felt like goodbye.

  ***

  The morning of Amara’s wedding was crazy. I was the maid
of honor, so I felt like I was being pulled in every direction possible. The caterer, florist, photographer, coordinator, furniture rental company, photo booth company, and venue manager all had my number listed as a day-of number, so that Amara wouldn’t be hassled on her big day. The calls starting coming in around 6 a.m., and didn’t stop until one minute before the ceremony.

  Amara had let me pick out my own maid of honor dress, as long as it was black. I'd found a long, flowing, empire-waisted black chiffon gown at Bloomingdales, which I'd probably spent way too much money on. I felt like a goddess in it. I'd also purchased some black stilettos, hoping I’d be able to walk all day in them. I tried to push the fact that I could’ve been pregnant by this point out of my mind. Those thoughts were only harmful. I couldn’t think like that. So instead, I put on my Spanx, wore a push-up bra, and decided if I wasn’t going to be "The Pregnant Maid Of Honor" that I could at least be "The Hot Maid Of Honor".

  I wore my hair in a braided bun, and my makeup was smoky. Amara had her friend, Tiffany, doing the makeup, so when all was said and done, I hardly looked anything like myself. In a good way.

  Amara looked absolutely beautiful. She wore an all-lace, form-fitting mermaid gown, which sucked her in at all the right places and accentuated her Portuguese curves. She left her hair down, except for a piece in the front that she pinned behind her right ear. Also pinned there was a single white gardenia. She looked stunning. I felt sad that only 35 people would see her this way. She needed her own magazine cover or something.

  In the midst of getting ready in Amara’s hotel room and trying to coordinate with all of the vendors, Harry and I had agreed to drive separately because I needed to be there at 10 a.m., whereas the ceremony didn’t start until 4 p.m. So as I left, and kissed him on the cheek, he said he’d meet me there. I spent all morning prettying myself (but not too much; it wasn’t my day). I was excited to see Harry, drink, dance, and to hopefully be on the right track with things. Sure, we still had issues. I knew I was in denial. I just wanted our old relationship back. The "new" us: those people weren’t fun.